Wednesday, 31 May 2017

Super Quick Crappy Review: Eliminator Super Hero*

Just a quick one, but we
need to talk about this knock-off figure.

B&M Bargains are a chain of large discount stores from Lancashire whose logo looks like a
brand of 1970s washing powder. They sell a wide variety of crap from mainstream
American food brands to home furnishings to crap knock-off action figures.
Chelmsford has a B&M the size of a warehouse (it used to be a Tesco), into
which we popped and I bought today’s study, meet the Eliminator Super Hero!

I’m a fairly large fan of
Toy Biz’s Marvel figures from the 1990s, especially their 10” lines, Eliminator
Super Hero has almost certainly been manufactured to cash in on the sales
success of the 12” Titan Heroes line (y’know, the really cheap 12” figures
Spider-Man and Star Wars have?) but his stance, proportions and just overall
width make ESH feel far closer to those old Toy Biz behemoths than any current
product. He’d deliciously retro; though I think it’s more a case of being
behind the times. Anyway according to his box he was made for B&M though it
doesn’t say who buy, which I believe is a clever ploy to avoid the inevitable
summons. Speaking of the box, I don’t normally do packaging but with knock-off
toys they’re often one of the best parts and this one’s surprisingly
professional, it features two images of our Eliminator Super Hero in two poses
traced from stock images of Iron Man taken from Google Image search and while
the colouring is completely different (it’s the colours scheme for the Iron
Patriot, who appeared in Iron Man 3 - that is not a coincidence) the actual
armour is spot is on to the figure. Given the usual quality of bootleg
packaging it’s surprising it’s not a picture of Batman, getting pieces of
accurate commissioned artwork (I’m guessing they also sell this in the Iron
Patriot colours scheme) you might as well consider this a Marvel Legends
release.

The figure itself is
wonderful, when knock-off toys get to this size they feel like humanoid Easter
eggs and I love that shit, this is especially true on ESH’s hips, you can’t
stroke an Easter egg for too long, it’ll melt, but I can stroke fake iron man’s
thighs all day. He is exceptionally metallic too and very shiny, in fact he
look and feels like Christmas and I may even use him as a decoration, of course
paint has worn off just through the non-contact sport of being in a box but
then what’d you expect? I’m just pleased he has paint-apps, let alone this many
and this many that stay (roughly) in the lines – he’s painted back and front
too, this is truly an elite knock-off. Design wise he’s there to do the job –
look like Iron Man but not enough like Iron Man to incur lawsuits, I’d truly
like to meet the man who looked at the Iron Man suit and thought ‘what that
really needs is an Iron Vagina’ – the man needs me to buy him a beer. Also if
he’s not a robot – and honestly I want him to be – his helmet is impossible,
the wearer would have to have no nose, or chin, or skull. Articulation wise
he’s really vey functional, he has swivels at the neck, shoulders and wrists
and hinges at the thighs, that’s not only a lot for the type of toy he is but
more than the Titan Heroes line has. Really there’s very little to complain
about, his hands are huge but they’re also far more robot-y than Iron Man’s so
it kind of evens out, also his shoulder armour is supposed to look hi-tech but
it really just looks like something from Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory. Shall
we go onto accessories?

Oh yes, a £2.50 Iron Man knock-off
has accessories, in fact he has three and they’re all huge (and undoubtedly
reused). What I’m assuming to be his primary weapon, as it was packaged next to
the c-grip hand and I used to play Iron Man and War Machine a lot on Capcom’s
fighting games and they produced some big-ass weaponry, is a gun so huge it’d
even give Cable penis envy; he can hold it but he really can’t stand while
doing so unless you point it down and use it to balance him, so unless EHS
spends all his career hunting down rouge DIglett gangs it’s not that
functional. His other gun can only be described as a deluxe Super Soaker - after the brand was absorbed into Nerf, this
one our hero can stand up and hold but the handle’s too small for his
gargantuan robot mitts so it just swings ‘round and either hits him I the face
or shoots him in the chest. I do like it though and I like the idea of Iron Man
going into battle with a Super Soaker even more so I may resort to Blu-Tac. His
final weapon, the one that’s both functional, practical and cool looking is a
melee weapon I’m going to describe a space wizard’s swordspear. It looks a bit
like an ostentatious light sabre and I have absolutely no doubt that Mystery
Company X has cast it in c-thru plastic and used it for exactly that. Iron Man’s
not known for using melee weapons, mostly known for blasting the fuck out of
things, which is absolutely why I enjoy it’s inclusion so much, I expect
knock-offs like this to obey the following line of thought ‘kids will think
it’s cool, it doesn’t matter how utterly incorrect, nonsensical or
inappropriate it is to the source material’ and the more it does this the more
I’ll like it, and that is why there should be knock-offs of King Kong riding
cheap rubber dinosaurs and wielding space wizard swordspears.

A conclusion for such a
rambling, ridiculous review of an Iron Man toy with the serial numbers filed
off? If you like this sort of toy, you have no reason not to buy it, it’s
currently £2.50 and for that you get a 12” shiny metallic figure with three
accessories and an Iron Vagina. If you think knock-off toys are the disgusting
you will hate this, should probably burn B&M and possibly me also. Or you
could just not buy it and use that £2.50 for a large box of Cheerios or
something like that.